"But now it is the obligation of our loyalty and piety to show our valiant soldiers how gratefully we remember them."

--

M. Tullius Cicero,
Fourteenth Philippic,
April 21, 43 B.C.

La Triviata

During World War I, an estimated three-quarters of American Quakers liable for the draft opted not to apply for conscientious objector status, and served in the armed forces.

Available statistics on hoplite battles during the “Golden Age of Greece” suggest that the victors averaged about 5-pecent killed in action, and the losers about 14-percent.

During the late nineteenth century, about a thousand lieutenants applied each year to the Austro-Hungarian Kriegsacademie (staff college), but only about 50 were accepted.

In 1909 the government of New Zealand offered to fund a "first class ship" for the Royal Navy, which in due time manifested itself as H.M.S. New Zealand, an Indefatigable Class battlecruiser which acquired an impressive record during World War I, and also saddled the Dominion with a debt that was not finally paid off until 1958.

Of the 2,200 or so Spaniards who took part in the siege and capture of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), in mid-1521, some 1,300 or more perished, along with tens of thousands of their Indian allies and even more of the Aztec defenders.

Diplomatic personnel aside, the first Soviet citizen to be a guest at the White House was Lyudmilla Pavlichenko, most successful of the Red Army’s famous “girl” snipers, in July of 1942, who would go on to be credited with 309 kills.

It is estimated that in the period from about 200 B.C. to about 150 B.C. adult Roman men served an average of seven years with the legions.

Following the Franco-Prussian War, the German General Staff calculated that at the Battle of Gravelotte (August 18, 1870), only one out of every 400 rifle shots had actually hit one of the enemy.